Editing

The Design of Rhetoric

Sam Dragga, Gwendolyn Gong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351854498
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book is intended to familiarize readers with the theoretical basis and practical applications of the editing process. This involves the examination of the rhetorical canons-invention, arrangement, style, delivery; and the corresponding rhetorical objectives of editing - accuracy, clarity, propriety, and artistry. We envision a diverse audience for this book. For aspiring editors, we offer an introduction to rhetorical principles as a vehicle for developing a repertoire of theoretically sound and effective strategies. For professionals-directors of communications, public relations specialists, experienced writers and editors of professional and technical publications - this book will serve as a reference and guide reinforcing their intuitive understanding and appreciation of the art of editing.

CHAPTER 1

The Canons of Rhetoric

Editors are artists. And, as artists, editors must be prepared to be actively engaged in every phase of the creative process culminating in their art—the text. They may take other writers’ texts and help shape them for presentation to readers, or they may compose texts themselves, using their expertise in the craft of writing; they may weave together a number of works into a tapestry—an edition or collection of texts; they may design the actual aesthetic presentation of texts—typeface, type size, paper, etc. It is this identification with the artist that yields an effective editor, for written discourse represents art—from the time it is a part of a writer’s imagination to the time its shape is determined through trial and error, to the time its form becomes distinct and stylistically pleasing, to the time the work is presented for others to read. Understanding the rhetorical repertoire of editors is the purpose of this book.

The underlying premise in this book is that rhetorical theory provides the basis or philosophical foundation for the editor’s judgments. As such, the rhetorical canons serve as a fitting and logical way of approaching the editing of texts. We have therefore divided the text into four major parts: invention, arrangement, style, and delivery.

Invention involves the discovery of the purpose or aim of the discourse, audience analysis, strategies for generating and gathering ideas. According to discourse theorist James L. Kinneavy, the major principle of organization for a text is its purpose or aim [1]. He describes the major aims of discourse as 1) expressive (friendly letters and essays), 2) referential (research reports and news articles), 3) persuasive (editorials and advertisements), and 4) literary (short stories, lyrics, and drama). It is necessary that writers understand the aim of their discourse in order to satisfy the informational needs and expectations of their audience.

Analysis of an audience is thus also a crucial consideration. In their research on the concept of audience, Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford distinguish between two perceptions of audience: audience addressed and audience invoked [2]. According to their research, “Those who envision audience as addressed emphasize the concrete reality of the writer’s audience; they also share the assumption that knowledge of this audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and expectations is not only possible (via observation and analysis) but essential” [2, p. 156]. In contrast to the notion of audience addressed is audience invoked: “the writer uses the semantic and syntactic resources of language to provide cues for the reader—cues which help to define the role or roles the writer wishes the reader to adopt in responding to the text” [2, p. 160]. To understand audience as either addressed or invoked, however, leads to oversimplification of the concept of audience. Writers need to know how to address a “real” audience as well as a “fictional” audience, and thus need to acknowledge both types. Without this understanding, writers will be unable to determine what information the audience needs and expects, and therefore what information to gather.

The gathering of this information for the audience involves invention strategies and researching. In their composition text, Four Worlds of Writing [3], Lauer, Montague, Lunsford, and Emig stress invention, emphasizing how strategies for generating information are also workable in professional writing situations. For example, they point out that brainstorming is a technique “often used in business and particularly advertising” and the journalistic formula is that which “has long been used by members of the news media” [3, pp. 511–512]. These invention strategies reveal to writers what they already know about their subjects, thus what they don’t know and need to find out. It is the function of researching to fill in these gaps. Researching begins with the interviewing of those who have this information. When this use of oral sources proves either impossible or insufficient, writers turn to written sources of information.

The editor’s job is to determine the accuracy of the information gathered and suggest to writers alternative sources of information, as necessary. In addition, the editor determines whether the information gathered fits the communicative aim and satisfies the information needs and expectations of the audience.

Keeping in mind the aim and audience, writers must organize their information. Arrangement is this organization of a text, the ordering of information according to appropriate cognitive patterns. Depending on the purpose or aim of the text, how the information is most effectively organized will differ. For example, a narrative invites readers to expect a chronological organization, while a description elicits the expectation of a spatial organization of detail. A discussion of similarities and differences or causes and effects leads readers to anticipate a climactic organization.

Editors must be adept at analyzing the clarity of a text’s organization. One effective method of accomplishing this is to consider cohesion, the set of semantic resources for linking a given sentence to a previous sentence. What are some properties of discourse that are present in a cohesive text—in, for example, a paragraph? According to text linguists M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan, two properties that form a basic taxonomy for cohesion are ties and topic-comment [4]. A tie refers to a single instance of cohesion. More specifically, a tie signals one occurrence of a pair of semantically related items (e.g., The tanks contain at least 1.5 days’ worth of reactant. They are designed to store this amount to assure continuous operation of the facility in case of a missed delivery). In addition to ties, there is also the property of topic-comment. Topic refers to a subject which the sentence is about (often called old or “given information”), and comment refers to the new information about the topic. Underlying this type of discourse analysis is the assumption that writers are motivated to communicate something which readers do not know or at least do not have in the focus of their attention. Editors, therefore, must alert their audience that something is to be communicated and prepare them by providing all the necessary contexts to make the transmission of information successful. The new information must be accompanied by at least some old information already known or explained to the audience (e.g., The tanks store 1.5 days’ worth of reactant. This supply assures continuous operation of the facility in case of a missed delivery). This linguistic approach to analyzing the arrangement or structure of discourse is one way editors or writers can produce and evaluate texts. Editors must be familiar with both semantic and cognitive patterns in order to assess the clarity of the arrangement—the presentation of ideas—to the readership. And editors must also determine the appropriate ratio of verbal and visual information (i.e., words versus illustrations).

Equally important to effective communication is the consideration of style. As rhetorician Richard Lanham tells us, all writers are potential creators of “The Official Style,” characterized as: “dominantly a noun style; a concept style; a style whose sentences have no design, no shape, rhythm, or emphasis; an unreadable, voiceless, impersonal style; a style built on euphemism and various kinds of poetic diction; above all, a style with a formulaic structure, ‘is’ plus a string of prepositional phrases before and after” [5, p. 81]. Lanham provides a good example of the official style:

Normal belief is that the preparation and submission of a proposal in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP), Request for Quotation (RFQ), or a bid in response to an Invitation for Bids (IFB) is no different than that of an unsolicited proposal for a grant from the National Science Foundation or another government agency; and that if such a proposal or bid is hand-delivered to the Office of Extramural Support on a Friday afternoon, it will get mailed the same day to reach Washington, D.C. by 4:00 p.m. of the following Monday. Having read this article, however, the reader, we hope, will agree that this is an erroneous belief which has led and, if continued to be believed, will lead to unhappy experiences for all concerned [5, p. 7].

Translated into a plain style:

Unsolicited grant proposals differ from ones solicited by a Request for Proposal (RFP), a Request for Quotation (FRQ), or an Invitation for Bids (IFB). If you bring a solicited proposal to our offices on Friday afternoon, thinking it will be mailed that day and reach Washington by Monday at 4:00 p.m., you’ll be disappointed. We hope this article has shown you why [5, p. 7].

It is the editor’s job to see that ideas receive expression appropriate to their importance, complexity, urgency, aim, and audience.

“Officialese” is also common in visual presentation (i.e., writers illustrate information without considering their communicative aim or audience). While numerous elaborate visuals might be impressive, as impressive as verbal officialese, writers and editors must always judge the clarity and rhetorical efficacy of their visuals. For example, while a table is less attractive and interesting than a chart or graph, it is rhetorically more effective if the readers must recall or review specific pieces of information [6, p. 133]. If the readers must be aware only of trends or relationships, then it is the appealing chart or graph which meets the readers’ information needs more quickly and more persuasively. The visual aid which is incorporated only because it is available is likely to be ineffective, that is, without rhetorical justification.

While verbal style has traditionally been recognized as a critical issue for writers and editors to address, appropriate emphasis on visual style also deserves serious attention. Editors must impress upon their writers the need for a clear, concise, and emphatic style adapted to their aim and audience, both in the verbal and visual presentation of information.

The final rhetorical principle is delivery, the total presentation of the text. Delivery refers to document design, the appropriate design for aim and audience. It is the equivalent of effective enunciation. For example, the use of headings and indentation, design of figures and tables, the choice of typeface and type-size, and the balancing or positioning of verbal and visual presentation on the page play a significant part in whether or not the document is effective. A well-designed report indicates a writer’s respect for both the work and the audience; it also aids the reader, by making the information more inviting to read and easier to understand. Because delivery influences the reader’s perception of the document, it is a vital rhetorical consideration. According to Robert Connors [7, pp. 64–65],

In contrast to the vast literature on oral delivery generated by speech scholars, the field of composition has always dealt with written delivery in a series of terse, mechanical commandments. These are usually found on a page or two pages of a handbook … but writers have tended to cling desperately to the letter of their handbook laws, never bestirring themselves to investigate whether the standard manuscript format they use is the most effective.

In the following chapters, we will consider in more detail each of these rhetorical canons—invention, arrangement, style, and delivery. This division of the fluid and flexible process of editing is admittedly a simplification. However, this artificial isolation of the four major stages in the composition of a text allows us to identify the corresponding rhetorical objectives of editing: accuracy, clarity, propriety, and artistry. Integration of the rhetorical canons in the final epilogue reveals the full complexity and creativity of the editor’s job. We will illustrate the practical implications of this theory by examining three categories of texts: technical publications (e.g., research reports), news publications (e.g., house organs), and promotional publications (e.g., brochures). We believe that theory must inform practice. Without this correspondence, the editor is merely a technician, given to the blind adoption of rhetorical guidelines rather than their insightful adaptation.

This book thus introduces editors to the design of rhetoric. It is this design which gives writing memorability as well as readability; it is this design which gives resonance to writing; and it is this rhetorical design which links even the most ephemeral of written communication to the timeless tradition of human discourse.

REFERENCES

1. J. L. Kinneavy, A Theory of Discourse, Norton, New York, 1971.

2. L. Ede and A. Lunsford, Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy, College Composition and Communication, 35, pp. 155–171, 1984.

3. J. M. Lauer, G. Montague, A. Lunsford, and J. Emig, Four Worlds of Writing, 2nd edition, Harper and Row, New York, 1985.

4. M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan, Cohesion in English, Longman, London, 1976.

5. R. A. Lanham, Revising Business Prose, Scribner’s, New York, 1981.

6. B. F. Barton and M. S. Barton, Toward a Rhetoric of Visuals for the Computer Era, The Technical Writing Teacher, 12, pp. 126–145, 1985.

7. R. J. Connors, Actio: A Rhetoric of Manuscripts, Rhetoric Review, 2, pp. 64–73, 1983.

CHAPTER 2

Invention

RHETORICAL THEORY OF INVENTION

Invention or “inventio” is the rhetorical art of finding effective arguments and pertinent information abou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Illustrations
• Preface
• Chapter 1 The Canons of Rhetoric
• Chapter 2 Invention
• Chapter 3 Arrangement
• Chapter 4 Style
• Chapter 5 Delivery
• Epilogue: Integrating the Canons
• Bibliography
• Index
• Contributors